


The Picnic

by Black_Crystal_Dragon



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Apologies, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Canon - TV, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Declarations Of Love, Dessert & Sweets, Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, First Kiss, Fluff, Food Porn, Friends to Lovers, Friendship Confessions, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Picnics, Post-Canon, Quote: You go too fast for me Crowley (Good Omens), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:09:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19718716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Crystal_Dragon/pseuds/Black_Crystal_Dragon
Summary: A few days after the averted apocalypse, Aziraphale invites Crowley to meet him in St James's Park. He doesn't tell him that he has something special planned.





	The Picnic

**Author's Note:**

> My first _Good Omens_ fic in 10 years! The TV adaptation has rekindled my love for this pair of adorable idiots.
> 
> Thank you to my amazing BFF [Ice_Elf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ice_Elf/pseuds/Ice_Elf) for the beta and for flailing over this even when I was mired in the middle and fed up with the whole thing. <3
> 
> Heavily inspired by many things in the 1967 scene in Episode 3 (Hard Times).

Crowley strolled into St James’s Park and made his way slowly around the lake, keeping an eye out for Aziraphale. He passed their favoured spot for feeding the ducks and slowed when he approached their usual bench only to find it empty. Then someone called from the grass nearby.

“Over here!”

The angel was sitting on a pale tartan blanket in the middle of a stretch of lawn, waving at him. Crowley sauntered over, taking in the large wicker basket covered with tartan cloth, the bottle of wine beaded with improbable condensation that rested in its shadow and the wide open space around them that would normally, on such a pleasant day, be dotted with people enjoying the sunshine.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“I thought we might have a picnic,” Aziraphale said, with only the slightest hesitation.

He busied himself with opening the bottle of wine and retrieving glasses, which gave Crowley time to recover from the memory of the angel’s voice breaking as he handed over a flask patterned with this exact tartan and begged him not to open it, the melancholy of his smile when he said _one day_ , both of them knowing it would never come.

This had to be deliberate. But for what purpose? They’d already done the Ritz, which Crowley had assumed was a reference to that awful empty promise, and nothing had changed because of it.

Aziraphale finished pouring the first glass and offered it to him in silence. Crowley knew he ought to do the sensible thing and walk away before he ended up like his beloved car, scorched to a husk and held together only by the power of his own will – but he’d never been able to deny the angel when he looked at him like this, with the furrowed brow and the big eyes full of entreaty. Oh, the good things he’d done for that expression. He snatched the glass and sat down, stretching his legs across the blanket and attempting nonchalance.

The wine was a white that had turned deep golden-amber with age, sweet and full of fruit flavours but with a bite of acidity still behind it. He savoured the first mouthful while Aziraphale poured for himself, set the glass and bottle aside and started producing finger-food from the basket. There was more than it strictly speaking should hold and most of it was desserts, which would pair nicely with the wine, Crowley supposed, but was so typical of the angel’s taste that he couldn’t help but smile. There were little squares of chocolate cake so dark and rich they were black against the plate. Pear tarts with gleaming glaze. A rainbow of pastel macarons. Tiny meringues with raspberries and pistachio chips scattered on top. A bowl of ripe stoned cherries that shone in the sunlight. Finally, savoury dishes emerged: pitted olives and quartered tomatoes, stuffed peppers and toasted nuts, a generous charcuterie platter and cheeseboard served alongside bread and crackers, garnished with large, glossy grapes, crisp slivers of apple and a selection of sharp condiments. There was also a plate of cucumber sandwiches, because Aziraphale wasn’t prepared to let the 1800s die.

Crowley dared a single wasp or fly or ant to just try their luck.

“Do start,” the angel fussed. Crowley took pity on him and ate a slice of prosciutto. It was perfect – heavenly, even, though not a single miracle was involved in producing it. Aziraphale didn’t need those when it came to food, he just knew where to get the best of everything.

“Quite the feast,” Crowley drawled. “We’ll be here all afternoon.”

Aziraphale glanced at him and quickly away. “Well if you have to be elsewhere –”

“Relax, angel,” Crowley said. He popped an olive into his mouth to stop himself from adding, _There’s nowhere else I’d rather be._

He swirled his wine and picked at the spread. Food was Aziraphale’s vice more than his own, and normally watching him stuff himself well past the point where most humans would start to feel ill, enjoying every bite to the full, was Crowley’s idea of a good time. Sitting in the sun while they did it should have been an extra bonus. Right now, however, the angel seemed about as interested as Crowley in the morsels he had so carefully laid out. Less, even: the plate beside his knee remained empty, and he hadn’t yet touched his wine. He sat more stiff-backed than usual on his corner of the blanket, face half turned away.

“Not hungry?” Crowley asked when he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“Not really,” Aziraphale said in a small voice. He sounded lost. Crowley longed to reach across the distance between them. He didn’t move, but when he spoke his voice was gentle.

“Then why go to all this trouble?”

Aziraphale’s brows drew together. “Because. There’s something I need to say and I thought – I thought this was a good way to do it.”

“Well?” he prompted. “Spit it out, angel.”

Finally Aziraphale looked at him. He drew a deep breath and said, “I told you once that you go too fast for me.”

Crowley froze. The words echoed across fifty years. Back then, his heart had crumpled as he realised that Aziraphale knew what they felt for each other but would never allow anything to come of it, and it had never really straightened itself out since. They’d never talked about it – until now. Hope that should have been burned out of him long ago licked around his ribcage.

“I was wrong, Crowley,” the angel whispered. “You’re not too fast.”

The stem of his wineglass snapped under the pressure of his fingers. He barely noticed, but Aziraphale gasped and soft hands slid over his: taking it from him and fixing what was broken before setting it aside, smoothing over the cuts to his fingers to heal them, and then simply not letting go. Aziraphale’s brow was scrunched with worry and earnestness as he looked back up at Crowley’s face.

“I rather think I’ve been too slow,” he told him with a remorseful attempt at a smile. “In fact, for a very long time I’ve been standing still. I’d like to change that. If I’m not too late?”

Crowley found the wherewithal to clutch at his hands in return. “Angel –”

The word came out choked with everything he had suppressed. The concern on Aziraphale’s face pinched tighter.

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” he said urgently, as if he actually doubted that Crowley would give him anything he wanted. “I know I’ve – well, not been a very good friend to you and I’ve said some really _inexcusable_ things, and I’m so sorry –”

“You didn’t mean it,” he interrupted, his voice a rasp.

He couldn’t bear Aziraphale apologising to him for covering his back – especially not now, when they knew what Heaven would do to punish those who stepped out of line. Besides, he’d always known that it was the angel’s ridiculous sense of duty and propriety talking, divorced entirely from the truth.

“No, but I still denied what you mean to me, Crowley! Repeatedly! I never should have done that,” Aziraphale protested. His voice shook a little as he added, “You’re my best friend too, you know.”

“’Course I do,” Crowley replied fiercely, tightening his grip. That went without saying. It was the fixed point around which his existence had revolved for the past two thousand years at least.

“Oh,” Aziraphale breathed, beaming.

That expression was as familiar to Crowley as his own face. He’d hoarded every glimpse of it since the Garden, knowing it was the best he could hope for and finding excuses to bring it to the angel’s face as often as he dared – but this was different, because this time Aziraphale wasn’t rushing to hide how he felt and it was like looking directly into the sun. His face was so full of devotion that it made Crowley’s chest hurt. It was better and worse even than the Ritz, where he had thought that the angel’s eyes couldn’t hold more open affection.

He leaned closer. “And you do know that I love you?”

There was nothing Crowley could do to disguise his surprise. He’d _known_ for a long time – how could he not? He’d just given up on the angel ever admitting to it.

“Ah,” Aziraphale said softly, his smile dimming. He lifted one hand and stroked over Crowley’s cheek, the touch so light that it was barely there. The tenderness and regret in his gaze were almost unbearable. “I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to tell you, my dear. I hoped – well, you know now.”

“No, yeah, I know. Knew. Before,” Crowley managed, trying for cool and missing by a considerable margin. 

“Of course you did,” Aziraphale said indulgently.

He didn’t believe it, which was annoying in some distant part of Crowley’s mind that was not preoccupied with the exact cadence of Aziraphale’s voice when he’d said, _I love you – I love you_ , like it was both the most obvious and important thing in the world. He would have argued the point but before he could marshal his thoughts Aziraphale spoke again.

“I’d like to kiss you now,” he said. “Would that be all right?”

Crowley blinked, disbelief and a flare of indignation bringing him back to himself. “All right? _All right_?”

“Well, I’m perfectly happy if you’d rather not,” Aziraphale said in far too reasonable a tone.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Crowley snapped and lunged across the blanket before the angel changed his mind.

He jerked in surprise but recovered fast. His hands came up, catching either side of Crowley’s face and slowing him enough that the first desperate crash of lips wasn’t hard enough to bruise. He kissed Crowley the same way he did everything he considered worth savouring, like good food and fine wine – _properly_ – taking his time and occasionally letting slip delicious little noises that shivered all the way down Crowley’s spine. It took every scrap of self-control he possessed not to crawl right into the angel’s lap.

Eventually, Aziraphale eased them apart with a contented hum. At some point, Crowley had wrapped his arms around his shoulders and he couldn’t quite bring himself to let go just yet. Not when the angel was still looking at him with so much love. Especially not when he stole another kiss.

Then he stole Crowley’s sunglasses.

“Oi,” he protested, tipping his head to unhook the arm from where it had caught around his ear. “What are you doing?”

“Looking at you,” Aziraphale said in a tone that suggested this was obvious. He set the glasses aside without breaking eye contact.

Once the barrier of tinted glass was gone he had nowhere to hide, but Crowley found himself not caring. Aziraphale’s eyes were the preternatural blue of a thunderstorm, and while he had noticed that detail before – there were precious few details he hadn’t noticed, given that he’d had six thousand years to memorise every aspect of Aziraphale’s unchanging human form – this was the first opportunity he’d had to look up close and with impunity. A minute or an hour might have passed before Crowley sighed and kissed him again.

When he finally leaned back and slowly released him from the coils of his arms, the angel pouted. Crowley smiled and reminded him, “We have a picnic to eat, angel.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened, his gaze flicking downwards. “Ah. Do we, still? I completely forgot, I’m afraid …”

That made two of them. He hadn’t even thought about the plates strewn across the blanket when he’d launched himself at Aziraphale. He straightened and looked down, fully expecting to find himself kneeling in two different kinds of dessert.

By some miracle that neither of them was consciously responsible for, not a single plate had been disturbed.

“Well,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “That was lucky.”

Aziraphale stared up at the cloudless sky above them for a long moment, hope lighting his face as much as the sun. Then he took a deep breath and pointedly looked away.

“Best not question it,” he said, flashing a tight smile.

“Right,” Crowley murmured. That probably was for the best. They could drive themselves mad trying to second-guess the ineffable. Maybe it was just dumb luck, anyway. 

He kept hold of the angel’s shoulders for balance as he shuffled on his knees to an empty section of blanket, then started tactically moving the food around to make space for himself. Aziraphale realised what he was up to and joined in, and soon Crowley was stretched out beside him, their shoulders close enough to touch.

“This is nice,” Aziraphale said as he picked up his plate and started filling it.

Crowley didn’t bother to suppress his smile. “It is.”

He retrieved his wine and settled in. The angel explored the culinary options as if he hadn’t picked out every one of them himself, chiming in with comments about the provenance and how he’d discovered that particular deli and frequently glancing up with his face almost glowing to catch Crowley in the act of watching. Once he couldn’t fit any more food onto his plate, he paused. He was eyeing the cakes. Crowley sipped his wine and waited.

“I know one really shouldn’t start a meal with dessert,” Aziraphale said, turning on the guilt for form’s sake, “But they look ever so good.”

“Go on,” Crowley drawled. He nudged Aziraphale’s shoulder and then didn’t bother to move away. “Not like it’ll spoil your appetite.”

The angel fought briefly against a smile before he gave in. “I suppose one little piece wouldn’t hurt.”

“No,” Crowley agreed. “Couldn’t possibly.”

Aziraphale selected a gooey square of chocolate cake, _not_ the smallest, and bit it delicately in half. He closed his eyes and chewed, practically moaning at the taste, radiant with unabashed enjoyment. It felt strange to watch him like this without the sunglasses, but Crowley didn’t want to put them back on. He did remind himself that it didn’t matter any more if someone caught him. Aziraphale swallowed and produced a napkin from the picnic basket to dab the corners of his mouth.

“Good?” Crowley asked, as if he didn’t already know. He couldn’t actually stop smiling. His face was going to stick that way, and he didn’t even _mind_.

“Delightful,” Aziraphale sighed. “Crowley, you must try it. Here.”

He lifted the remaining bite of cake to Crowley’s mouth. He opened – _to decline_ , he would swear, if anyone asked – and Aziraphale popped it between his lips. The rich flavour of the chocolate burst across his tongue: just the right balance of sweetness and bitter dark cocoa, the ideal blend of velvet sponge and smooth filling.

“You like it?”

“Mm,” he nodded, swallowing, not thinking about cake at all. “Perfect.”

“Good,” Aziraphale said warmly. He reached out with sticky fingers and swiped his thumb across Crowley’s lower lip to take care of a smear of chocolate, then set about sucking the buttercream off his own skin.

The glowing affection kindled brighter in Crowley’s chest, filling the space behind his ribs until they ached with trying to contain the bursting majesty of a supernova. His next outward breath caught on words he couldn’t restrain any longer.

The angel looked up from wiping his hand on the napkin, beatific, his eyes misty and bright, and said, “My dear. I know.”


End file.
